土用の丑の日

Today is ushi no hi, which is the hottest day of the summer...luckily for us, it is not true! The temperature is moderate and skies are overcast and very dull gray looking...BOOOOO. On this day people eat grilled eel flavored with sticky teriyaki-like sauce.

The meat is tender and tends to fall apart in one's mouth...since it is generously slathered in sauce, there is no fishy taste at all. The sauce itself is a culinary treat and hard to recreate at home, so they say. On hot and humid days, people often lose their appetite and feel weak, at times falling prone to headache and general malaise. Eel is said to give one much stamina to survive the summer heat and is rich in protein, calcium, vitamin A and E.

Eel from China lacks the correct texture but can be bought at half the price of domestic eel...though I would not go there, one is sacrificing the juiciness and soft meat that comes from Japanese-raised eel. These days most are farm-raised unlike the old days when eel would spawn in lakes and then swim out to the ocean once they have grown older...or vice versa, my memory is foggy. The one thing that put me off it is seeing the live eels...they look like snakes, yuck!

I am off to go eel-restaurant hunting...yummmmm.